16 January 2014

Cultural Imperialism: How it works

How, you ask, could I be so crass as to talk about "cultural imperialism" or "imposing Western values" when mass underage Hamas child weddings are taking place RIGHT NOW* in the Gaza Strip?
(*2009. I blog slowly)

But it's time we rethink one major aspect of our Euro-American/Christian sensibilities, cultural suppositions and traditional practices, a highly prevalent taboo that most of us take as read:

In the West we have ingrained cultural beliefs that:

The bride at a wedding wears a white dress

The bridesmaids and wedding guests should not upstage the bride

The bridesmaids and wedding guests should especially not wear a white bridal dress

It's really embarrassing if two or more people at a party wear the same clothes

Even ignoring their weird, racist beliefs about Islam and paedophilia, a bunch of slow-witted Europeans and Americans imposed their cultural assumption that The Person in the White Dress Is the Bride, looked at somebody's wedding photo, and, believing their own local values to be universal, decided it was full of child brides.